


Child’s Play

by catty_the_spy



Series: Fortress of Glass [1]
Category: Dollhouse, Stargate: Universe
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Character Death, F/M, Gen, Mildly Dubious Consent, violent imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-15
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-29 08:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/685132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catty_the_spy/pseuds/catty_the_spy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bloody shoe, a fortress of glass, and a magical chair to take it all away. This is their destiny, this game they play.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Child’s Play

**Author's Note:**

> Dollhouse Fusion for my longfic bingo card. Ginn, Lt. Scott, Chloe, and Park are Ruby, Quartz, Topaz and Sapphire respectively.

   
“You knew,” TJ says.

Everett clenches his jaw. “I knew.”

TJ’s eyes are red, but she’s not crying now. “I have more computer skills than strictly necessary for a nurse.”

He walks behind his desk. Her file is pulled up, but nothing’s opened. “Do you want to know who you are?”

TJ doesn’t look at him. Her nails dig into her palms. “I’m Tamara Johansen. That person…it’s just data on a wedge.”

He closes the file.

“You knew,” she says again.

He waits.

She slaps him, quick and sudden. Then she leaves his office.

Everett opens the bottom drawer of his desk and pulls out a bottle of whiskey.

 

* * *

 

“Kiva is becoming more of a problem.”

“It’s being dealt with,” Camille says. Varro. Everett doesn’t approve.

“Do you really think that’s going to be enough?”

“We’ve infiltrated her organization. Very soon we’ll know her every move. What more do you want?”

He raises an eyebrow.

“A kill order on a federal agent?”

“You’d be doing them a favor.”

“That’s completely out of the question,” Camille says. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Kiva nearly took down the D.C. House. We need to stop her before she makes it here.”

“She won’t make it here,” Camiille says. She sounds convinced.

Everett knows better.

 

* * *

 

“How are you feeling, Miss Armstrong?”

Chloe smiles. “Tired of airplane food. I can’t wait to hit an actual restaurant.”

Eli chuckles nervously; he’s always been a little shy around her. “Well, you’re all set, so…uh…whenever?”

“If you’ll come with me, Miss Armstrong?”

Her bodyguard looks grumpy. Sometimes she hates that her dad’s a senator. She’d much rather tease the computer guy.

 

* * *

 

Quartz is sitting at the bottom of the staircase. Vanessa stops in front of him. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting.”

Vanessa rolls her eyes. She hates talking to the Actives. “What are you waiting for?”

“Topaz is having a treatment.”

Oh. Shit. Vanessa looks around to see who’s paying attention. “Why don’t you go to art class?”

“I would like to stay here.”

Vanessa lowers her voice. “Someone’s going to notice what you’re up to, kid. You can’t be this obvious. What if I was Wray?”

He blinks at her with wide eyes. Why does she even _bother_?

Rush peers at them from his glass tower, and Vanessa swears under her breath. Her phone rings.

“Hi! This is Eli; apparently they’re going to use Quartz for the Kirpatrick engagement today instead of Emerald? So if you could find him and bring him up here…”

She hangs up.

Quartz is still sitting patiently at the bottom of the stairs, and Rush is still watching them.

“Quartz, hey.”

“Hello.”

“Get up, it’s time for your treatment.”

“I like my treatments,” Quartz says as if it’s some sort of revelation, and Vanessa really hates those stock phrases. Then he hesitates. “I promised to wait for Topaz.”

“You’ll be back in plenty of time,” Vanessa says, using a hand on his shoulder to steer him up the staircase.

She can feel Rush’s eyes on them all the way up.

 

* * *

 

“Did I fall asleep?” Topaz asks.

“For a little while,” Eli says. He’s getting better at this. Nicholas would never admit it out loud, but Eli’s brilliant when he keeps his nerves under control.

“May I go now?”

Quartz is waiting at the bottom of the stairs, where he’s stayed since the Kirpatrick engagement ended two hours ago.

Nicholas watches him smile when Topaz walks into view, and they walk to TJ’s office together with their shoulder’s bumping.

Eli comes over with the wedge. “I still think Mama Armstrong is pretty creepy.”

“I imagine that her husband would agree with you. If he knew.”

“Of course he would; who would brain change their daughter?” Eli pauses at the computer. “What are you looking at? You aren’t doing one of those brooding ‘I’m disappointed in you’ things are you? I didn’t mess up the wipe; I followed the script and everything.”

“Eli. Put the wedge away.”

“Done. I’m just saying, I haven’t messed up on anything engagement related in a while. I’ve actually been doing pretty good. I would appreciate a ‘well done, Eli’ or a ‘good job, Eli’, or even an ‘I’m proud of you, Eli’.”

“Bring up the next active, Eli.”

“Or that, that works too. It’s not an outright condemnation, and that’s progress. I’ll just get Opal up here for the ‘perfect first boyfriend’ gig.”

Nicholas tunes Eli out. Ruby is holding a book, which isn’t all that unusual. What’s unusual is that she looks like she’s reading it. Her handler walks past and says something to her. She puts the book down and walks to art class. Sapphire is climbing the rock wall, but before that she’d been hovering nearby Quartz while he waited for Topaz to return.

 

While the actives eat their dinner, Nicholas does a last minute systems check on the pods. He leaves a book in Ruby’s.

 

* * *

 

Ronald tries not to be obvious about admiring Sapphire through the changing screen. They’ll have eyes on them until the next engagement; it isn’t safe.

He walks her to the chair room, where Eli chatters his way through the wipe. Rush is nowhere to be found, for which Ronald is grateful; the two of them have never gotten along. He’d probably see Ronald’s feelings on his face.

Sapphire smiles at him. “Good day.”

“You should go to TJ’s office for your check up.”

“TJ is nice,” she says, and follows him out. There’s a blind spot just around the corner from TJ’s office where none of the cameras reach. That’s where Sapphire takes Ronald’s hand and squeezes, giving him a big reassuring smile. It’s a fraction of a second long. Then she drops his hand and reassumes her placid empty smile, and they round the corner.

But for that small amount of time, Ronald is the happiest man alive.

 

* * *

 

Quartz, Topaz, and Sapphire are eating lunch at the same table. Again. Vanessa can’t help but cast her eyes around, trying to see who’s paying attention to them.

Rush is standing in the window of his tower, but from this angle it’s impossible to tell what he’s looking at. All she can see is that he’s pacing. Ronald’s watching them, but he’s always watching Sapphire – she’s the reason he’s here, the reason he sacrificed his career and joined a project he hates. He won’t say anything, but Vanessa makes a mental note to talk to him.

She needs to have another talk with Quartz again, too. He can’t keep doing this.

 

* * *

 

Nicholas knows everything about everyone in the Los Angeles house; it’s his business to know. He’s the reason that the leaders of the Stargate Program don’t know more than they do about his technology, and he’s going to keep it that way. He knows that Quartz was in the air force, and joined the Stargate Program as treatment for his PTSD. Topaz’s mother got tired of her reckless behavior and forced her in, and in return gets the perfect daughter. He knows about the loss Tamara was running from in her old life, and all of the oldest employees knew about the incident that resulted in her becoming Tamara in the first place. He knows.

No one joins the program unless they’re running from something. He knows that better than anyone else. Even the old guard in Colorado Springs was running from their pasts. That’s what makes them perfect for this, for scooping people out of their own bodies and replacing them with others.

And for every person with Camille’s idealism and staunch belief in the good they can do there is another person like Mrs. Armstrong. Those are the people that pull the strings.

 

* * *

 

“You’re going to destroy your liver,” TJ says.

Everett puts his flask away and runs a hand through his hair. “I’m fine.”

“Sure you are. Which is why you spent last night drooling on your desk.”

He can’t help but huff a laugh. “I thought you hated me.”

“I’m still responsible for your health. That’s what you programmed me to do, isn’t it? Fix people the way you couldn’t fix me?”

She’s still beautiful, and unattainable, and way too good for him. The bitterness lining her face doesn’t suit her.

How much of this was Rush’s plan from the beginning? It seemed awfully cruel.

“Stop drinking during business hours,” TJ instructs shortly, and then she leaves, leaving the smell of her perfume behind.

Everett pulls out his flask.

 

* * *

 

Ruby is the last active in for the night, and in three hours Camille will put on her wedding ring and take a series of busses to reach her house, where Sharon’s waiting. Sharon will ask about her day supervising the growth of replacement organs for the wealthy, and she’ll climb into her very nice bed in her very nice house and try to forget the stress of the day.

Today has been rather uneventful. There have been no glitches, no unpleasant surprises, no engagements that needed to be cut short for the active’s safety.

A good day.

Camille had spent most of it in her office, discussing terms with clients over tea and sitting through a dull teleconference. She’s happy it’s over, and now she can unlock the drawer on her desk, and put on her ring and go home, finally.

She’s just keyed in her pin and pressed her thumb to the scanner when the building alarm goes off. She takes out the drawer key and waits for the system to reset.

The wail of the building’s alarm matches the throb of her headache perfectly.

 

* * *

 

Eli’s staring at Ruby’s lifeless body. Nicholas pulls her out of his arms and lays her on the ground. He looks at Eli. “Are you injured?”

There’s no point in asking if he’s alright. He’s about as far from alright as it’s possible to get.

“Eli!” he snaps, because they don’t have the time for this. Then he shuts off the alarm.

They’re going to have to wipe all the actives to make sure they don’t remember this, don’t remember the handlers' bodies cut to pieces on the floor, the whine of the alarms. Eli doesn’t have that luxury.

“Eli,” Nicholas growls again, and grabs Eli by the hood of his stupid jacket to drag him away from the corpse.

Eli stumbles over his feet as if he’s forgotten how they work. Young thunders through the chair room, stopping long enough to make sure they’re both alive before moving on. He’s followed by a troop of armed security. They all hesitate at the sight of Ruby’s body.

Eventually Greer makes his way in, with Sapphire holding onto his arm.

“I don’t understand,” she says, and she’s clearly been saying this for a while, because Greer doesn’t even respond. “They’re broken. I don’t understand.”

“Is she hurt?” Nicholas asks, because that’s the important thing. The trauma can be dealt with much more easily than a physical injury.

“A little bloody, but she’s good. I need some place to leave her while…” He trails off when he finally catches sight of Ruby. “Shit.”

“Put her in the chair,” Nicholas says, already forming a plan. “We could use the help.”

Eli hasn’t said anything. He’s standing where Nicholas left him, in the door separating their lab from the chair room. Nicholas pushes past him to put together an imprint. There’s no point asking him to wipe Sapphire. Why waste time when he knows that Eli won’t respond?

“What about him? Is he okay?”

Nicholas glances over his shoulder. Greer is frowning into Eli’s eyes, Sapphire still crying at his shoulder.

“The answer to that should be obvious. Put her in the chair, and go get a tarp.”

Greer nods with none of his usual surliness.

“They’re broken,” Sapphire says again. She whimpers.

 

* * *

 

Camille tracks blood on the carpet of the chair room. She raises her eyebrows when she sees Sapphire going over security footage and Greer guarding the door, but she doesn’t comment.

Instead she stops right in front of Rush. “Young is bringing Quartz. Get Telford’s wedge.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Greer asks.

Camille cuts her eyes towards him, lips pursed. “This is not a discussion. If Dr. Rush is too busy, then we can have Eli do it.”

“Eli won’t be doing anything today,” Rush says. He tilts his head in his protégé’s direction.

Camille frowns in concern. “What happened?”

“Ruby. And Kiva.”

She squeezes Eli’s shoulder. “This has been a hard day. Right now, I need to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.” She turns back to Rush, face set. “Telford’s wedge. Now.”

 

The chair is eerily calm in the sea of destruction around it. None of Rush’s equipment had been damaged.

After his betrayal, Camille had no interest in ever talking to Telford again. Unfortunately, Kiva and twenty dead bodies have taken that choice from her.

This is more than a doggedly persistent federal agent. Camille looks behind her, at the bloody prints left by her shoes, and she steels herself.

When they have the information they need, Quartz will be wiped and they won’t have to bother with Telford for a while. It’s a small consolation.

Quartz sits patiently while he’s strapped down. Rush and Young both look at her.

“Do it.”

 

* * *

 

“Kiva has been let go,” Young had said, only the day before. “Apparently, there were…concerns, about her handling of the case.”

“Well then,” Camille said with a smile. “This gives us a little more to work with. I’m certain they won’t mind us taking care of the problem for them.”

“Then I have your permission?”

“Varro’s latest reports are worrisome. You have my permission.”

Young had paused at the door. “Worrisome?”

“You’ve heard of the Lucien Alliance?”

“The terrorist organization?”

“Oh, all for great justice and the good of humanity and to save the planet.”

“The terrorist organization Telford was involved with?”

Camille nodded, her face grim. “The world’s been wondering who was at the head. Now we have a clue.”

The door shut with a sharp click. “He thinks _Kiva_ is the head?”

“He’s almost certain. He’s very near to the inner circle, and apparently, those very near to the inner circle are ‘in the know’. Word on the street is that it’s Kiva. She infiltrated the organization on behalf of the government a few years back, and apparently she flipped – the investigation fell through, she took up a new identity on the inside, and two years ago, guess who took over after the first dear leader was assassinated.”

“Son of a _bitch_.”

“So you have your kill order, Everett. Now that she’s been released she’s off her leash, and given the ability to choose her own path I’m sure she’ll do something ill advised. Take care of it.”

And Young said he would.

 

TJ looks a little green around the gills after she administers the sedatives, but Camille can’t afford to reassure her now.

Telford is affiliated with the Lucien Alliance. And he is going to talk.

 

* * *

 

“Do you need anything,” Ronald asks her, and Katie smiles. She knows him, she loves him, even though she’s never met him before, and Katie is Sapphire, and Sapphire is no one, but right now Sapphire is mostly Katie. Katie doesn’t know Ronald, but Sapphire does, and that’s enough. It’s _enough_.

“I don’t know if you have any coffee?” she manages to squeak out.

Ronald grins and Katie tries not to squeal. “These guys live off the stuff. I’m sure they have a pot going; hold on.”

She watches him walk away, and she is Katie and she is Sapphire and they both enjoy the view. While Ronald is gone, Dr. Rush pushes two small capsules into her hand.

“For the headache” he says. How he knew she had a headache Katie doesn’t know, but Sapphire expected it so Katie doesn’t question. She thanks him.

Someone’s left bloody footprints on the carpet. Someone wearing heels. Katie shudders. Katie is no stranger to crime scenes, but Sapphire still remembers the bodies. They were broken, they were broken, and some things she remembers but this she does not understand, she does not have the ability to understand this, they were broken. They were broken and no one could fix them, and Ronald had dragged her away, wouldn’t let her look, but she’d seen it happen. They were whole, and then they were broken, and she does not understand.

“Hey,” Ronald says. His hand is warm and real on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Katie is Sapphire, but right now Sapphire is Katie. She’s trying to help prevent another crime for happening. Dead bodies are nothing new to her. She leans into Ronald’s touch. “I’m wonderful, thank you.”

“You’re doing really good.”

“I try to be my best,” Sapphire says. “I mean, I am the best,” Katie says, and then she blushes. “Not to brag or anything. I mean, I’m pretty good at what I do, but there’s always room for improvement and I’m still a little shaky on some of the specifics of your system but uh…. That is, I can do it, obviously. I mean, you can see that I’m doing it, because you’re standing next to me, and you’re very…I mean –”

Ronald laughs, and Katie’s so embarrassed she could die. She takes the coffee.

There’s a scream from the next room over. Katie frowns at the closed door. “What’s going on in there?”

Ronald’s face darkens. “An interrogation.”

“Oh.” Sapphire wonders who hurts and she wonders why TJ doesn’t help them. Perhaps they are broken too. But right now Sapphire is Katie, and Katie gives the door another curious glance before she gets back to work, hyperaware of Ronald’s warm presence by her side.

 

* * *

 

“Whose body is this?” Telford said, a mere two minutes after the imprint.

“Whose body is this?” And he’d screamed, and TJ had been ordered to sedate him.

Young needs a drink.

He’s turning into a functioning alcoholic at _best_ , and right now he needs a drink so bad he can almost taste it, but there are more pressing concerns. All of them need something – Camille needs new shoes because the ones she’s wearing are ruined, TJ needs a private place to break down, and Young needs a dark office and a bottle of Jack.

He hadn’t enjoyed stepping in what used to be Sanchez. Camille’s pressing her lips together so hard that they’re white around the edges. Who did she have to walk through to get here?

“What does Kiva want?”

Young raises his eyebrows at Camille. The answer is to bring down the Stargate program. It always has been.

“The House,” Telford slurs through the cocktail he’s been given. “She wants control of the House.”

He takes it back. Camille had the right idea. And if the tech is what Kiva wants, that explains why she stayed away from this room, where Rush’s machines worked their magic. If she knew enough to cripple the D.C. house, then she had to know that Rush was the only person with the complete plans. If he’d made a backup copy of himself, he was keeping it very well hidden, because there was no record of him taking a scan. Rush lives in his lab, with the chair close at hand. And Kiva needs him.

He glances at Rush, standing in shadow behind a phalanx on machines.

Daniel Jackson and Samantha Carter invented the technology, but Rush is the one who perfected it. If necessary, Carter and Jackson – or one of their several thousand regularly updated backups – could recreate Rush’s success, but they were focused on bigger and better things. There were rumors of space travel circulating throughout the program.

Until the original team deigned to intervene, Rush was the most important person in this branch of the Stargate program, and everyone knew it.

And if Kiva had Rush, she had everything.

 

* * *

 

“The bullet nicked you,” TJ murmurs, cutting the thread with a quick motion. “You were very lucky. Just a few stitches.”

Eli doesn’t respond.

He’s spoken to the actives, TJ knows – participating in their wipes and holding simple conversations with them in the open halls of the House. Other than that, he hasn’t spoken to much of anyone. TJ hopes it will pass.

“You should’ve come straight here,” she continues, applying antiseptic cream and a bandage. “I need to take care of these things _when_ they happen, not a few hours later.”

The bodies, what few whole ones they have, are in another part of the building. She was happy to get them out of her office, and she’s doubly grateful now.

“All done,” she says, trying to force some pep into her voice. On impulse, she offers him the jar of lollipops she passes out to Actives.

He gives her a startled laugh and takes a grape one. His eyes are wide and watery. “Are you giving these to just anyone now?”

“You’re not just anyone,” she says, and he laughs again.

A few tears escape and he wipes them away, still chuckling at the grape lollipop in his hands. The laughter shifts into a panicked wheeze.

“I thought I was going to die,” he tells her, voice strained. “Then she jumped in front of me, just like that. I didn’t even know she could do that! She jumped in front of me….”

A few of the actives have been doing things they shouldn’t be able to do – learning, remembering, _loving_. And, apparently, choosing to make sacrifices for others.

There’s nothing she can do about it. Rush knows – she’s told him, concerned that the wipes weren’t thorough enough. He’s been protecting them. And TJ had let him do it, stirred by a sense of something she couldn’t explain.

“Just like that. And then she was dead, and blood…her blood was everywhere, and I couldn’t, I didn’t know what to do.”

Now Ruby was dead. And whoever she used to be before she signed her five year contract with the program would be deleted or used to build other personalities. There’d be a new active, a new Ruby to take her place.

“And I keep thinking, there has to be something we can do, right? Some way to bring her back? She can’t be dead, just like that. There has to be something. She was…like that they’re just like little kids, y’know? There _has_ to be something.”

And TJ would treat her scrapes and bruises with a smile and a lollipop, just as she had the old Ruby. And she didn’t know if she could bear it.

 

* * *

 

Varro had been placed in a small activist circle Kiva was known to be a part of. He was designed to be fascinated by Kiva, and to gain her attention.

They hadn’t known at the time that this was a sect of the Lucien Alliance. If they’d known, Camille wouldn’t have been reluctant to issue a kill order.

Varro believed he was an undercover agent. If questioned, none of his answers would lead back to the L.A. House. He had a fabricated past that would hold up to rigorous scrutiny, and he checked in once a week.

He wasn’t their only option.

Ginn was a work in progress. Ruby was a highly demanded active, and they were working carefully to present her as a fledgling supporter of Kiva’s cause. One with a knack for computers and an overdeveloped sense of curiosity.

Now of course Ginn was out, as Ruby was dead and another newcomer with the same name would have been idiotic. Besides, Kiva knew they were watching her now. She probably didn’t suspect Varro – if she did, she didn’t suspect that he was connected to the Stargate Program. Still, she would be more suspicious of newcomers, and perhaps others who asked too many questions.

They had to be careful. And they needed to take her out, without blowing their only eye on her operation.

 

* * *

 

“How can I be my best now?” Emerald asks, scars crisscrossing her face and snaking into her hair. TJ wonders if she’d looked at the old nurse this way, before she’d been imprinted as Nurse Johansen.

“I’ll help you,” she says, keeping her voice gentle. It doesn’t matter. She knows who she is. She’s Tamara Johansen. She’s a nurse. She’s a member of the Stargate Program. She had an ill-advised affair with their chief of security that’s long since over. She likes violets.

She touches Emerald’s injuries with gentle hands, and reminds herself that she is a person, that she is a nurse and these are her patients, and she can’t take out her feelings on them. They’re not the ones who did this to her.

“I’ll help you be your best again,” she tells Emerald, giving her a reassuring smile. “Let’s start by taking care of your face.”

“You make people better,” Emerald says. Her voice is full of trust.

 

* * *

 

Rush slams the box on Young’s desk, startling him awake and making Tony’s heart jump into his throat.

“This is pathetic,” Rush growls. “Can’t you pull yourself together long enough for us to update the security system?”

Young gave Tony a bleary-eyed frown. “And Quartz is….?”

Rush makes a disgruntled noise. “Tony Barietty is here to help us. Tony, meet our chief of security.”

Tony waves awkwardly, not entirely sure why Young is talking about “quartz”, unless “quartz” is the name of their old security system. He pushes his glasses farther up his nose.

“If you don’t mind, sir, I’ve already drawn up a few plans. I discussed the problem with your technician and I have a few options for you.”

Rush and Young glare at each other.

Tony clears his throat. “Have I come at a bad time?”

Young rubs his eyes and forces himself upright, attempting to discreetly place an empty bottle in the trashcan under his desk. “You came at a great time. Why don’t you sit down, mister…?”

“Barietty,” Tony says. “Please, call me Tony.”

 

* * *

 

Quartz and Topaz like to pretend they’re married. They hold hands. They go to art class together. They climb the rock wall together. They swim together. They visit the sauna together. They look at books together.

The only time they are not together is when they are getting treatments. They like their treatments. When one of them is getting a treatment, they sometimes wait for each other to be finished. When they visit TJ, they take two lollipops so that they can share.

It’s important to exercise. They run on the treadmills together. Exercising together helps them to be their best.

Sometimes, at night, they sleep in the same pod. The man named Rush tells them to keep it a secret; he won’t tell anyone, and they shouldn’t tell anyone either. They must be very careful.

It’s nice to sleep in the same pod. It feels good.

 

* * *

 

“I’ve never been happier to get a treatment,” Chloe says, practically falling into the chair.

“Everything alright?” Eli asks. He looks a little pale, but her bodyguard said that he was getting over the flu, so Chloe assumed that was it. She’ll offer to buy him soup after her treatment.

“Dad’s being really weird. He thinks something’s wrong with me, and mom thinks I’m up to something, and they’ve been going at it for days. It’s terrible.”

“Well, let’s get this out of the way. This is going to pinch.”

 

* * *

 

April is Sapphire is April, and this is getting exhausting.

“You okay?” Ronald asks, steadying her.

“I’m good,” April/Sapphire says. “The dust just needs to settle. I…some things stick, and some don’t? I have no idea what’s going on in my head.”

“I know.” Ronald grinds his teeth. “I wish there was something I could do.”

Sapphire rests her hand on his shoulder, and April kisses his cheek. “You’re doing it. You’re here. Just give me some acetaminophen on the way and I’ll be right as rain. We’ll get through this. You’ll see. Even zombie-me is sure of it.”

He kisses her, just a soft press of lips against lips, like he’s afraid to go any further. April wants to surge forward, to deepen the kiss and take what she wants, but Sapphire knows they can’t. Not yet. This is a secret they have to keep. She is April but she is Sapphire, and Sapphire is no one but she loves him, loves him so much she thinks she could burst. And it’s enough.

 

* * *

 

Quartz is sitting at the base of the staircase again. Vanessa almost can’t handle saying anything to him now.

“Good day,” he says with an open smile.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m waiting,” he says. “I promised her I’d wait until her treatment was over.”

She looks up, up to where Rush is pacing and Eli is arguing with him. Topaz – Chloe – is gone, and if Mama Armstrong gets her way, she might not be coming back.

“Why do you keep doing this?” Vanessa asks, her hands balled into fists. “I keep telling you that someone’s going to catch you and you do it anyway. One day Wray is going to find out, and you’ll get sent to the Attic. You understand so much more than you should; do you understand that? Why are you still _here_?”

“I made a promise,” Quartz says, as if it’s the most monumental thing in the world.

Vanessa tries not to snarl. “It’s not that simple.”

“Okay,” Quartz says, agreeable as ever. He doesn’t move.

 

* * *

 

“Kiva is dead.”

“That’s good news,” Camille says. The words “federal agent” dance before her eyes, but she forces herself to remain calm. Former federal agent, leader of a terrorist group. The government should thank them.

“Should I recall Varro?”

“Do you think there’ll be more trouble from them?” Camille asks. She wonders what a “thank you for killing them” fruit basket from the government would be like. The stress is getting to her.

“The organization didn’t die with her.”

Young’s eyes are red-rimmed and he’s wearing yesterday’s suit. The stress is getting to him too.

“Leave him in place,” Camille says after a moment of consideration. “We need to keep an eye on them, and he’s our best resource. Does Headquarters know?”

“I got the information from them. They’re, ah, giving you a bonus.”

Camille massages her temples. “Have it dispersed to the rest of the staff. Please. And I need the background on our newest client.”

“Of course.” He hesitates. “Ma’am? HQ wants us to pull out. They’ve advised that the Lucian Alliance is no longer a concern.”

Camille frowns at her desk, her back to him. “I’ll take that into consideration. That will be all, please.”

She fingers the lock to the drawer that hides her wedding ring and takes a deep breath.

 

* * *

 

How much of her is real? How much of her is really her? How much of her is programmed?

Are they the reason she likes violets? The reason her heart hurts when she passes a pregnant woman on the street? The reason she likes cherry lip balm and can’t stand the taste of curry?

How much of her is real and how much of her is just a story she’s acting out, a game the program’s decided to play?

She is Tamara Johansen. This is the only body she’s ever known. But how much of her is really her, and why is she here? Why is she Tamara at all?

 

* * *

 

Nicholas watches them from his glass kingdom, his glass cage, and he knows that it’s all going to come crashing down on them. It may not be Kiva and it may not be soon, but it’s a certainty. They’re children, roughly using their toys, but one day those toys will break, and there will be no turning back.

Perhaps he should jump ship while he can, but he’s bound to this place. This is his destiny: to build the source of his own demise. He knows it, has known it since the day Gloria died and his world ended. The Stargate Program had known it too, had snatched him up greedily – just another toy, and one it would not share.

So he watches them, from his glass kingdom, his glass cage, and he waits for the glass to break.

**Author's Note:**

> I might write a Park/Greer coda to this later, but for now: here it is.


End file.
